56 Ford Fairlane hardtop.

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MercuryMac

Builder Junky!
Joined
Jan 18, 2013
Messages
4,919
Location
Northern Alberta, Canada.
I bought this '56 Ford Fairlane in the fall of 2020. It was finished and done nicely. There are a couple of things that I want to fix up that the seller couldn't find. I'm not complaining, because this car is very nice, inside and out.
There is a vibration in the driveline at over 80 kms or 50 miles per hour. I knew this when I test drove it, but I liked the car and I like diagnosing problems, [well, the ones that I can beat, anyway]. I tested the U-joints right away and found that wasn't the problem, but the slip yoke was fairly loose in the extension housing. So today I popped the seal out of the back of the transmission and proceeded to try and get that pesky bushing out. I made a few different tools and hammered, beat, pried and cursed until I got the old one out and then installed the new one easily. The slip yoke fits in the new bushing a way better. A downer is when I ordered the new bushing I also ordered a seal and you'd think that a good partsman would assume that they should be roughly the same size. Well, the bushing has an ID of one and a half inches and the seal won't fit over my little finger.
 

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Your Fairlane is one sharp looking ride.[cl
Frustrating when parts guys don't know parts....:mad:
I see it has the Overdrive tranny, I drove my brothers 56 Delivery to California in 1978, the OD was great on the highway, freewheeling on the down hills made it cheap on gas even with the 312.
 
It was the best year for Fords, and black is the best colour, too. I could have accepted a wee bit of other colour on there also, but it is what it is. I'm quite happy with it.
 
From my experience, the worn bushing is likely due to an out of balance drive shaft. Something else to worry about. [S



Oh yea, beautiful car. [cl
 
Yes Skip, I'm taking the driveshaft into town tomorrow when I go to try and find a seal.
Today I worked on lining up the neutrals in the gearshift linkage. It turns out you have to know what you're doing to adjust the linkage rods. Nothing changed, ---- well, almost nothing, I guess I gained some wisdom.
 

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I found a new seal and installed it. The driveshaft was out of balance quite a bit, so it has an extra biggish weight welded on it now.
The shift rod that I was trying to adjust was at the end of its threads, so it had to be bent to get more adjustment. That is done.
A signal light is fixed with a new bulb. I did open a can of worms when I asked the Napa guy if he had a signal light flasher that would run a system of half bulbs and half LEDs. Mine flash very slowly, so I assume the flasher is old fashioned. Anyhow, I never got a new flasher, and I left the partsman scratching his head.
I also hooked the battery down a little better than I had it and found the ground cable pulled completely out of the clamp. I don't know how I started it to get it into the shop.
 

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Mac, this is the flasher you're lookin for. It's non polarized and the only thing you need to do is plug it in and hook the wire to ground.

s-l640.jpg
 
Mac, it doesn't matter if your system is half LEDs or none at all, the "LED Flasher" that Old Iron posted will do the same thing. It works off a timer instead of resistance, so it will operate anything in the system.
 
Thank you Burger.
Thank you OI and Snopro. I was quite sure that that is what I wanted and how the new flasher worked, but after five minutes listening to the partsman, my confidence was shaken and I came home shaken, empty-handed and determined to go to another store to get a LED flasher.
 
Today went well. It turns out that when I bought a timed flasher for my '36 truck a few years ago, I must have had quite a time, so when I found one I bought two. There it was on my 'electrical stuff' shelf. I dug under the dash for quite a while and finally found the old flasher and replaced it. pic one]. Pic two is my test. It works like a charm.
Then there were a bunch of little things. The return spring on the brake pedal didn't always bring the pedal to the top to click off the brake light switch. I found a light spring and added it to the mechanism. Voila, the brake lights go out every time now.
You know how long old two door, doors droop down after a while, well, I adjusted it up -- my way.
I painted a couple of rock chips.
The last picture is one side of the lowering blocks partly installed.
 

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